Blood Child (7 page)

Emily took us on a tour of the house and grounds, explaining the various and sundry renovations. The largest was a small cottage on the opposing side of the hedge maze her father had built. Two huge unicorn topiary hedges secured the entrance. Emily wove her way through the leafy walls, her hand trailing the sides until we finally came upon the construction site. Both Adam and I had lost all sense of direction. We had been too busy watching Emily glide to our destination.

It was the solution to the problems posed by living in the house where her beloved brothers were massacred, even with the changes. The cottage and the maze provided a mental and physical barrier between her and the house. Until it was finished, she was bunking with Maggie, when she didn’t fall asleep on the sofa in the game room.

She flatly refused to give up the estate. She kept reiterating that it was her responsibility. Adam raised an eyebrow in response. He was clueless as to why she felt responsible for the property. I was having a bit of trouble understanding it myself, but I let it go. Emily seemed more mature here on the estate than she had in sunny Florida. She had stopped running and had returned to face her demons. Part of me wondered how literal that last part would be for her. The person—or more likely, the persons—responsible for the massacre were still out there.

The tour stopped short of going down into the basement to see the crypt before we were called back into the house for dinner. The sun had begun to set and with it our desire to head into the depths of Atalik’s palace. Despite all of Emily’s talk, we felt like the basement and its morbid treasures still belonged to him. Ms. Maggie had saved us before logic could talk us out of what our intuition was screaming at us. Tomorrow the crypt would be open and Atalik’s remains removed for cremation.

D
inner was banquet-style. Simon and about twelve others boys were there, in addition to the construction crews. Most were in the same Stepford uniforms that Michael and Ben were wearing earlier. They were all at the estate as a part of a state program. If they completed the program, it would expunge their juvenile transgressions and give them job experience. Em beamed with pride as she explained that the boys had all completed their GED requirements and were set to complete the program by the end of the summer. Then they would go on to college, the military, or jobs in the city.

Ben, one of the young men from earlier, was absent. He had pulled guardhouse duty. He would eat the remnants of the buffet later. Simon winked at me as he made his way to a table close to mine. There was little conversation in the dining hall. Everyone was too busy eating Ms. Maggie’s excellent fare. Even Alex was chowing down, ignoring the scenery. It had been a grand ballroom once upon a time, with gigantic murals depicting the battles between the Titans and the Olympians. Only one of the murals was intact: Zeus standing in triumph over his father, Cronus. The symbolism of the youngest child defeating the wicked, corrupt father was not lost on me.

Everything about the new Bath manor was a departure. The grand bedrooms had been torn out and replaced with dorm rooms. Formal sitting rooms were now classrooms. Everything, including the communal meals, was all a part of Em’s plan to combat the memories of the past. Joyful memories would replace each of the negative ones that haunted her, or at least that was the hope present in every action taken and planned for the manor.

Once we finished eating, everyone hung out, catching up and playing card games. A few moved into the game room, which had been renovated to include a movie theater. The men and women who worked and lived at the estate were open and friendly, freely talking to me and letting Alex snap picture after picture. None of them seemed spooked about living and working there. They all knew the history and the plans for the estate. The past is the past, they said, and everyone wanted to be a part of the future Em was planning here. The only time their smiles dimmed was when I mentioned the crypt. The basement was the one place everyone avoided. No one went down there alone, always in pairs and always during the day. It seems that on more than one occasion, a crew member had spooked himself when working down there. A few told me they had had nightmares, but wouldn’t go into details.

Absolutely nothing supernatural or mysterious happened in the house during the renovations, beyond the way Mrs. Maggie’s cookies disappeared whenever she left the kitchen. Em was basking in the warmth of the gathering, and I could see there was little chance of working with her this evening. Ms. Maggie offered to guide me back to Atalik’s study. I was glad to have the help. The mansion may have been patterned after one in Europe, but the interior design of the corridors seemed more Minoan than European, especially in the wing of the house that contained his office.

Ms. Maggie was a matronly woman who managed both the kitchens and the household staff. This was her second time at the estate. The first time was back when her curves were more defined. She had been fired by the old man himself after she refused his advances. Instead of leaving right away, she had taken her time and had said good-bye to each of the children. Em still remembers her coming into the nursery and hugging her. The child, Em, hugged her back so fiercely that tears flowed down Maggie’s cheeks when she finally had to tear herself away. She had returned to the house when Em asked her back.

“Mr. Bath was a monster. He only ever saw people as things to be used.”

“Why did you take the job the first time around?”

“The money, of course. I was fresh out of school and needed some kind of an income. The kitchen was amazing, and Mr. Bath was incredibly indulgent when it came to ordering, but it didn’t take long for him to show his true colors.” Maggie sat back in one of the large leather wing-backed chairs. The years must have added lines to her face and gray to her coal-black hair... I could see why Atalik would have wanted to sample her wares. She stood and moved around the office with ease, tracing her hands along the lined bookshelves.

“I loved this room. Didn’t feel right to have all these beautiful books locked away. Mr. Bath always insisted I bring him his meals personally. He loved to talk to me about the books—trying to impress me, since nothing else worked after the first week I was here. Women used to throw themselves at him, mistaking his charm and arrogance for affection.” She paused for a moment and looked at me. “I never saw him open a single one. Not a single book. He talked about them, enjoyed the idea of the knowledge they represented, but I don’t think he ever opened a one. It ruins the value, you see. If you open and read one of these old books, once read they are no longer pristine. No longer pure. Yet, if you don’t read them, what’s the point?”

She opened one book and breathed the scent of its pages in deeply.

“I don’t know,” I stammered. “Seems kind of pointless to me.”

She dropped the book she was holding and picked up another one, repeating the process she had just taken, going from one book to the next, filing through them like the keys. It seemed odd since she had just spent the afternoon overseeing the top-to-bottom cleaning of the room.

“It is all about perception and power. Bath wanted power, but all he ever managed to do was have its illusion. When little Em ran away, he was powerless to get her back. He actually sent his man, Gerald, to my place to see if she was hiding out there.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“There is a good deal you don’t know. Pretty much everyone you have talked to about Bath feared or hated him.”

“Did you?”

“Fear him, no. I didn’t hate him either. I felt sorry for him. When he finally made a pass I couldn’t ignore, I told him to his face what I thought of him. He didn’t fire me himself. No, he had Gerald do it for him. Atalik Bath was a coward at heart.”

“So do you think he was evil?”

“I think he thought he was; he thought if he couldn’t be good, then he might as well be evil. His ancestral obsession was just a way to tie him back to their darkness. Imagine his surprise when he found out that she, the infamous Blood Countess, was innocent of vampirism. It was all a frame job to seize her lands. Politics.”

“Then why track down any and nearly every artifact associated with her?”

“Because he didn’t want it to be true. He wanted to be right. If he was wrong, then Gerald and his creepy posse had tricked him into thinking there was a way to cheat his own death. Being a fool would have been worse than death for him. I was here when they brought Em’s mother into the house. I saw him inspect her coffin and then place it in the corner of this room until nightfall. He talked to her as if she were still alive. I still have nightmares thinking that maybe she was.”

The day that had etched itself behind the walls of Em’s memory would also forever be carved into Maggie’s as well. She had come to retrieve the lunch dishes. The room was usually vacant after lunch, but Atalik was at his desk furiously going through papers. The dishes had been thrown on the floor, along with everything else that had been on the desk. Gerald had knelt with her to clean up the mess. His eyes glanced up as if to say he was sorry for it.

Maggie wanted to turn around and walk out. Something in the air was just off—more than usual. Nothing was ever really well in the manor. The air always held a kind of sickness, poisoning everyone. Money and the promise for more kept many of the manor employees working month after month and day after day. The pay was good and deceptive. Work for a year, and make three times what you would in the city. But they never worked for just a year. Fear kept them at their jobs. Fear kept them in check, and fear lead them to their deaths. Fifteen members of the household staff would be found dead after the massacre. The other eight people were the only ones who mourned the dead master.

Atalik was angry that day in the study, angry that his plan was at a standstill. As Maggie and Gerald cleaned up the pieces of broken china, he complained about how long it would take to complete the next part of his plan. He didn’t specify what the details were.

“Three mothers in glass entombed, one lord of all to die, and the blood of innocence still to be shed.”

He repeated the phrase over and over again, demanding an explanation from the air and completely ignoring Maggie and Gerald. How was he going to complete what needed to be done? How could he be sure it would work? None of the men he had assembled had answers. Maggie was spared further knowledge as the great man rushed out of the room in frustration. Gerald offered Maggie just one bit of advice: Get as far away from the house as she could before he figured out the answers. Maggie didn’t have a chance to leave on her own. A week later, she was fired.

So many things struck her as strange while she worked in the manor. The day and Gerald, who was never a friend or even an ally, were further cemented into her memory by the evening’s events. Maggie was in the kitchen, working on the last of the prep for the next day’s breakfast, when Atalik, Gerald, and a group of men carrying a long ebony box entered. Atalik completely ignored her. Gerald’s eyes were once again sorry, but offered no explanation. The men seemed preoccupied with trying to get the elongated box down the twisted steps to the basement. Maggie was less than a fly on the wall to them. They didn’t notice her, just as she hadn’t noticed the little girl sneaking through her kitchen earlier in the evening.

Curiosity led her down the same steps three hours later, after the men had come up. She wound her way down the stairs and through the labyrinthine cellar. The place was so seldom used that it was easy to figure out which way to go by where the dust was disturbed. The only place well traveled in the cellar was the massive wine collection. The other areas were constantly under construction or lacked use. With forty-seven rooms in the mansion to be cleaned daily, the household staff neglected the cellar with the exception of the wine collection, which Atalik checked daily. When she heard Emily’s footsteps fleeing from the far end of the chamber, she slid behind one of the wine racks.

The wall on that edge of the basement was constructed with a local limestone, like the foundation, only it was newer and lighter in color than the rest. Maggie made her way to the wall, wondering what was compelling her forward. With a click her foot jerked down having triggered the release as a seam in the wall appeared followed by a doorway.

Coming down the stairs into the chamber was not one of her better ideas, and continuing forward didn’t seem particularly bright either. But her feet were almost at the bottom of the stairs before this thought had time to complete itself. The ebony box was one of three coffins that stood on end facing a granite sepulcher with Atalik’s name on it. The coverings to the coffins were glass. The rhyme she heard earlier in the study—its meaning still a mystery she suddenly felt no desire to solve—echoed over and over again in her mind.

Before leaving the chamber, she saw a few droplets of blood near the base of one of the coffins and wiped it up. She reasoned that Emily must have been fleeing the crypt when she spotted her. Atalik didn’t need to know that the girl had been playing in the basement or that she had found this. A week later Maggie would be fired, and the mental barriers keeping this memory from her conscious mind were cemented and cured in place just like in Emily’s mind.

***

I suggested to Maggie that we go down into the basement using the back stairs. She shook her head and said there was a better way. Atalik spent quite a bit of time in his study. He would enter and wouldn’t leave for hours, but on occasion someone would enter the room to find he wasn’t there. He always said people were mistaken about his whereabouts or that he had been there the whole time, something they couldn’t dispute without incurring his anger at their perceived stupidity. Since the man wasn’t a magician, he had to have another way out.

Reason led us both to tap on the walls of the study, listening for hollow places. Several were found. The first was a compartment that held a safe, and the other two were large enough for doors. We were giddy with excitement, laughing like three-year-olds high on Pixy Stix. An hour later we were the same kids, crashing hard after the high had worn off. .

“Maybe we should just go down the normal way,” I suggested. She shrugged and motioned toward the door.

We were kids once again until we reached the bottom of the basement stairs and were engulfed by darkness. The sudden darkness sucked up all the joy while Maggie’s hand desperately searched the light. The sudden illumination didn’t help; descriptions of the cellar as mazelike were not exaggerated in the slightest. Maggie’s memory of her last trip still seemed fresh enough to guide the way, even after twenty years.

Left, then right and right again, another right, then left, and the edge of the wine rack made an appearance. The first five rows were empty, sold to help finance the school. More was being readied to ship to a New York auction house specializing in wine. The boxes were waiting for their precious cargo. Men would be by in a couple of days, Maggie explained, to finish packing. Everything had to be done in a precise way to ensure the value remained intact. Maggie continued to rattle on about the expense of the wine and how rare some of the bottles were until we came to the end of the room. The chatter helped both of our nerves. I could barely make out the difference in the shades of limestone used on the walls, but it was there.

Foolish reason made us both begin to stomp the floor, trying to unlock the door to the crypt. The door slid open without either of us hearing the trigger go off. We looked at each other without a hint of the former glee in our eyes. I think she wanted to suggest that we come back in the morning or with Adam, but she just stared at the opening. Maybe those were actually my thoughts.

The room was lit just as it had been described. Everything was the same, except for the woman covered in blood, cowering to the right of the sepulcher. She was very much alive for someone residing in a crypt, and she was looking at Maggie and me. It was an incredibly visceral look, accompanied by a growl.